Quarter Reads

By the by, I remain interested/amused by Quarter Reads, where I have uploaded several stories.  The ten dollars is a bit of a high initial ask, but it's almost intoxicating flitting around the archives, picking out stories to buy for $0.25 each.  

Plus, now you can "favorite" an author and know when they've uploaded something new.  So... you all know what to do, I trust.  ;-)  Given the amount of flash I write, I'm sure to have some Quarter Reads exclusives sooner or later.  

Amortized

The summoning booth has a line.  I scuff the leather on my loafers and check my phone.  I don't really have time, but without a PowerPoint demon to run my presentation, I don't have anything else to do.  I hope I won't be late.

The fat idiot inside can't work the latch.  I tug from the outside, and he breathes garlicky breath in my face as he flees, sweating.  He was calling a succubus.  I know the type.

Inside, I sweep the remnants of his salt circle into the disposal. Disgusting pig.  Push the button, the new circle falls down neatly from the dispensers.  One, two, three go the blood-treated iron coins. I get mine from Soul Survivors.  They do diversified holdings, no fewer than a thousand contributors per coin.  It's a decent risk, so long as you get out before the law of averages kicks in and you run the risk of tipping over the fifty percent mark on your contribution. I've got good information.  I researched the userbase and projected summoning habits thoroughly before I committed.

The demon appears in a flash of sulfur and heat.  You never get the same one twice, but I swear it looks familiar.  I open my mouth to tell it about the damned PowerPoint, but a rumble from overhead distracts me.  I look up and see the lances of light penetrating the overcast.  Wings and swords and trumpets, fire and smoke from beneath.

The demon smiles.

"Foreclosed," it says.  "All of you."

Excerpts from the Self-Guided Tour of the World Serpent Informational Center

The hallway is long and walled in tile and steel, but you will notice it does not echo.  The constant rush of saltwater and poison outside is an unending susurrus that swallows sound.  First-time visitors  often feel that the structure is pulsing faintly, the walls breathing with the motion.

This is an illusion.  The visitor's center is not near any of the lungs.

As you walk along, you may feel free to touch the walls or floor and  feel their warmth.  Jormungandr is a reptile and therefore cold-blooded, of course; the heat is the exothermic reaction of the  venom impregnated in its every muscle and bone with the exterior metals and ceramics.  The infrastructure requires constant repair by specialized teams.  Their mining equipment is tipped with diamond and  coated in cat's blood to neutralize the effects.  You need not fear; while collapses were common in the early days, the visitor's center has never suffered any lapses, whether structural or autoimmune in  nature.

The central columns contain the actual grid.  Please do not approach them.  Electricity flows along the grid through Jormungandr's nerves and bloodstream, piping information and power along its length and therefore throughout the world.  The Plague of Quakes in the late 1800s was eventually diagnosed as a degenerative seizure disorder; improved wire shielding and a decades-long corpus callosotomy at Jormungandr's skull in the Marianas Trench, completed in 1973, have resolved these problems.

Your tour will conclude at the door marked in purple.  The gift shop is open year-round.

"Columbidae" at Flash Fiction Online

October is apparently when everything is dropping.  "Columbidae" is up, marking my second appearance at Flash Fiction Online under as many different editors. ;-)

Go read the story that has Anna Yeatts writing in capslock.  I'll guarantee that it's one of the best stories about crazy naked human pigeons you will read for the first time this week.

"The Shallows" at Toasted Cake

So if you aren't listening to Tina Connolly's Toasted Cake podcast, first, you should do that, so go ahead.  I'll wait.  They're short, mostly.

You can then listen to the newest episode, which features "The Shallows," originally published at Flash Fiction Online.  :-)

First Person

The First Person was on the move again.  It hadn't changed position in subjective years.  What that meant outside the game, the NPCs couldn't be certain; they only had the barest notion of what 'outside' even meant, and differential time flow was only one of many theories the best NPC scientists had managed to concoct to explain measured discrepancies.

The First Person was unstoppable, a juggernaut, a demigod, but it had long since stopped trying to hunt and kill the NPCs with any verve or vigor.  It barely even bothered to gun them down if they passed through its line of sight, though as catastrophically (and expensively, though again, 'money' was a theoretical construct for the NPC population, and most of them thought it was too silly to be real) overpowered as the First Person was, "barely bothered" tended to obliterate a few neighborhoods every time someone misjudged the placement of their hit boxes.

Now, though, it was moving.  It found the streets deserted, and though it might have entered the buildings and slaughtered every living thing inside quite easily (every year, another NPC inventor insisted they'd found a way through the invisible walls that penned them into their levels, but none had ever worked), it ignored the doors and alleys and ladders, instead plowing straight ahead, guns bristling, only firing off a rocket to jump from every now and then.

No one knew where it was going, but everyone wanted to keep out of its way.  On the other hand, no one wanted to let it completely out of sight, either.  Better to know which way the danger might be coming from.  So the NPCs trailed along at as safe a distance as they could manage, across the miles and through the levels.  Cycles passed and animations reset.  Items spawned and despawned, and still the First Person walked on.

Then, at last, they saw something coming the other way.  Another armored colossus, another following cloud of terrified NPCS.

Another First Person.

No one in the crowd had known there could be more than one (though the NPC poet-historians could recite the oral history of the servers and their long, slow decline.  Ping, ping, lag, went the mantra, in pursuit of the mystic state of latency).  A second First Person.  It seemed somehow obscene.  How long had it been since anyone had seen another?  How long had it been since anyone had even learned the word "multiplayer"?

They thought they had seen destruction.  They thought there was no more that could be done to them.

They soon learned otherwise.

Good Cop

Ramsey pulled the badge off using both hooves.  The slick plastic stuck to his wool and squirmed from his grasp as if alive; it had, after all, been designed for someone with claws.  Lupine sniggers filled the locker room.  No one met Ramsey's gaze when he glanced around.

"I think it went okay out there today," said Doulpho.  He was Ramsey's partner, gray fur showing all around his muzzle.  Doulpho didn't like the situation, Ramsey knew, but Ramsey gave the old wolf credit for keeping a positive attitude on the outside.  For trying.  "It's hard for anyone to be the first."  Doulpho coughed and scratched at his chin with one paw.  "Hey, look," he said slowly, "it's Friday.  Everyone's going down to the watering hole after work..."

Ramsey could sense ears pricking up all around them.  Barely suppressed snarls vibrated in a dozen throats.  Inside his head, Ramsey adjusted his opinion of Doulpho sharply upward.  Assuming the offer was genuine, Doulpho had just made a lot of enemies for the sake of a comradely gesture.  Ramsey forced a smile.  "No, thanks, Doulpho.  I've still got those night classes.  Maybe next week."

Doulpho nodded his understanding, his predator's eyes wide.  The tension in the room ebbed slightly.  No sheep in the bar, not yet.  Ramsey worked his bulletproof vest over his horns, which just this year had started to curve inward at last.  Fuck the night classes.  He'd go home and watch television, then sleep.  Then on Monday he'd come back, and the job would start again.  He'd wear a badge.  He'd carry a gun.

He would be a cop among wolves.

Jangleangle

You can get used to anything, my uncle Otto used to say.  That’s probably pretty true.  I don’t think about it much because the Noise gets louder when I do.

For me, the Noise sounds like an alarm clock in the next room.  Most of the time it does, anyway.  Sometimes it gets closer, when... you know.

Yeah, don’t think too hard about that.   Did it spike?  You’ve got to be careful.  That looked like it kind of hurt.

Oh, I don’t remember much before the Noise.  I wasn’t born with it, but I was pretty little.  I’m almost as good as most of the younger kids; they don’t even have to try to avoid thinking wrong.

What?  What?

Hold on.

Sorry.  I was... I got distracted.  I was confused.  I’m okay now.

Oh, I was telling you.  I was telling you something.  Acclimation.

Right, yes.  It was Tony.  I mean, Tony isn’t here anymore.  That’s a thing I had to get used to.

Ow.  No, I’m fine.  I said I’m fine.

Anyway.  Tony.  I saw him last, you know?  I’m the one who had to...  He was always in the basement.  He called it his “laboratory,” but it was a stupid basement and that’s all it was, okay?

Five years.  He was five years older.  So he had, you know, he knew Mom and Dad before the Noise came and taught us the right way.  To think.  The proper way.  Not many people remember moms and dads.

Tony kind of helped raise me.  Like a volunteer Mentor.  I mean, everyone does it now, yes, of course, and that’s the right way and proper, but this was before, in the early days.  The chaos.  He did it because he wanted to.

Ow.  Right.  Yes, of course everyone wants to, that’s the right way, yes.  That’s the right.  Way.  But it was different somehow when Tony.

What?  What?

Sorry.  No, I was just.  Thinking.  Tony was bad, okay?  And it’s hard for me because I liked what he did, what he was in those.  In the days.  Before.  But he was bad.  He did bad stuff.

It was in the laboratory.  He made a bad thing.  I went down there.  I went to get him because I had some food.  Some cans.  It was.  I had to work hard to get them.  I think.  It’s.  I can’t remember.

I went down and it was quiet.

Ow.  No, look, this is important.  I can do this.

Ow.  No!  I will.  I’m going to say it.

It was quiet.  And he.  Tony.  He looked up at me with a big grin, his big stupid teeth.  He looked at.  Smiled.  At me.  And he said, “I did it.”  And I didn’t ask him what.  Because.  It was quiet.

I had to.  The Noise shows us the right way.  He made it stop.  His machine.  I had to stop him.  I had to stop the quiet.  That was... the right way.

No, I’m fine.  I’m okay now.  It’s... everything’s fine.  Just remember.  You should.  I can’t.   Remember.  What I told you.  You have to.

Listen.  You have to.

Hear that?

Burt Never Returned the Leaf-Blower He'd Borrowed Last Fall

- Morning, Burt.

Morning, Dave.

- You know your cat, Burt?

My cat's name isn't Burt, Dave.

- 'Course not, Burt.  But he is your cat.

Sure.

- You know how you said yesterday that his tongue was like sandpaper?

Did I say that?

- I believe you did, Burt.

Well, and it's true, now I come to think of it.

- It might well be, but as it happens, your cat was behind you at the time.  I could see him because I was standing facing you, like I am now.  He seemed... interested.

Interested how, Dave?

- Well, to be blunt, Burt, my belt sander is missing.

Changing the topic, Dave?

- Not at all, Burt.  And it seems someone was trying some amateur carpentry in your backyard.  Looked like a rough ladder to the bird feeder.  Or half of one.  Not coincidentally, your cat is behind you again today.  I'm sure you can hear the belt sander warming up.

The cat's belt sander?

- My belt sander, Burt.  Let's be clear.  To return to the topic: your cat.

What about him?

- He looks angry, Burt.  Mighty angry.  You might want to skedaddle.

I don't follow, Dave.

- I'm saying, Burt, that he looks about as angry as a cat with splinters in his tongue.

Skin

They pass the dead forward.  He slathers mortar down and adds them to the wall.

He doesn't mind the work.  He knows it is necessary.  Dimly, through the cracks, he can see another walled city scudding on the cold winds.  But today it does not draw near to smash and crash, breaking the dead of both away to oblivion.  Such things happen, too regularly to be only chance.

There are always more of the dead.  Sometimes the wind blows hard or fester-demons come to pound on the shell and the walls grow thin.  Other times he must push the wall out himself and listen to the dead outside fall away, their sacrifice wasted.

Somewhere far away, somewhere so distant that it might as well be a different country, his cousins and fellow citizens work to keep the city alive, work to build the ships that will carry the exploratory teams outward, perhaps to found new cities where they land.

He smears another layer of mortar.  His joints creak.  Soon he will climb up and sink into the mortar, join his wall and protect the city himself.  But not today.

Today, they pass the dead forward, and he adds them to the wall.

"The Shallows" at Flash Fiction Online

My flash fiction The Shallows is presently available in September's issue of Flash Fiction online.  One alien ship and a thousand words.

This one was inspired back when they thought they'd clocked neutrinos exceeding the speed of light and sparked all kinds of crazy speculation even though all the actual scientists suggested it was probably experimental error.  It actually was experimental error, of course, but what if it wasn't?  ;-)

Anything is theoretically possible.

Drop by, read the other stories, leave a comment or some change in a cup if you feel so inclined.

Buzzing the Scales

Burt rechecked the bindings.  The only thing worse than an improperly waxed crocodile was losing footing mid-slalom. 

The bell sounded.  Burt launched himself forward.  His crocodile grinned as ice chips and powdery snow sheared from its scales, stinging Burt’s face.

Flags passed in a blur.  Burt couldn’t remember how far he’d come; there was only the present: the slope, the ice, and the crocodile.

He barely realized he had come to a halt until he heard the murmurs of the crowd.

Murmurs?  Not cheers?

He saw his time and gasped.  A personal best.  Maybe a record!

Why were they so quiet?

The judge approached, grim-faced.  “Disqualified,” he rumbled.  He pointed down.  Burt’s croc gazed at him, reptilian eyes hooded and impassive. 

“That,” said the judge, “is an alligator.”

Sunday, Early Morning

Trash day.  Simon heaved a sigh and smiled.  All down the street, the lumpen gray-green trash bins stood sentry beside his neighbors' driveways.

"C'mon, Bugsy."  Simon rattled his dog's leash and walked on, enjoying the pre-dawn chill.  But Bugsy whined and held back, refusing to step onto the grass to do his business.

"What?" Simon asked.  Abruptly, he heard a peeping sound.  He leaned closer to the garbage bin.  "It's only a frog, Bugsy."  He considered trying to let the poor thing out, but he had no idea how he'd find it.  This wasn't even his bin.

The peeping returned, more forcefully.  There must be several frogs, two or three.

Louder.  Perhaps ten...

Louder.  Twenty?

The sound kept increasing.  Simon stepped back, Bugsy cringing at his heels.  There were deeper croaks, now, the sounds of larger frogs.  He almost expected the bin to start vibrating with the force of the voices within.

Something bumped Simon's back and he jumped with a shout before he realized he'd run into the bin across the street.  Then he heard the peep behind him.  And another.

One by one, all down the street, the frogs - the things in the trash bins - began to call.

Meet the Band

Fade in.  Intro plays, fades into voiceover.  

Close-up on the lead singer.  The interview is in progress, the first question inaudible.  Vic shifts on his overstuffed chair, one leg tucked up under him.  Unable, even on camera, not to perch.  “Well, yeah, I mean, originally it was a joke, kind of.  Like the Who, or the Band, you know?  So it’s like, ‘Who?’ and you go, ‘Exactly!’  So we’re the Real Monsters.  You watch King Kong or whatever and they come in all heavy and go, ‘But who are the real monsters?’  And it’s like, we are.  We’re the real monsters.”  

He laughs, teeth glinting in the bright studio lights.  “I mean, I drink blood for a living.  I don’t go out of my way to kill people, but, well, shit happens, you know?”  The interviewer interjects.  “Fuck, do you check to make sure all your beef is free range organic what-the-fuck-ever?  I don’t  try to make it hurt.  And Lonso, under the right circumstances, just goes balls-out and starts killing people.  He can’t help it; no self-control, you know?”  

There is a clip of stock footage from one of the werewolf’s rampages.  Just a flash of fur and a shot of screaming in the distance.  Nothing graphic; this is early evening broadcast, aimed at youth.

“And then C-134N and Frankie – no one does percussion and keyboards like robots and dead people, let me just say right now.  C’s got no hate for anyone, but no love, either, you feel me?  And Frankie has major problems with authority.  They’d both be killing you right now except they know it’d be inconvenient.”

The camera cuts briefly to the corner, where two sets of glinting dead eyes stare out, each with its own brand of bleak and detached amusement.

“So it’s like, people ask and, you know, we have the answer now.  There’s... there’s a moral clarity.  In relation.  Everyone knows where they stand.  The... we’re it.  It’s us.  The answer.”  He laughs again, glances away from the camera.  “We’re the real monsters.  What the fuck are you?”

The Towers of Haran

The towers of Haran pierce the sky, great looping swirls of translucent glass.  We admired them from afar, up in the north, before we became Haran, long before we ever thought to come to this land in the first place.  At first they appear colorless, transparent, but then the first rays of the sun leap across the horizon and set the world afire, and the thousand subtle shades become apparent.  It is a tracery of frost that spreads from the highest slopes of Yttrin Mountain all the way down to the wall at the furthest reaches of the burbling Sal'Vikanti, where it runs through the valley and out to the sea.  

Beneath His Notice

It's echoes, man.  Resonances.  Nested versions inside nested versions.

Look.  You know how they discovered penicillin, right?  They were studying some crazy germs and had a bunch of old petri dishes, but they had to leave unexpectedly and when they came back, everything was moldy.  Only in some of the dishes, the mold was killing the bacteria.

Right, so that's us.  The mold.  The scientist is distracted - he's looking out the window and contemplating the blue infinity or whatever - and we're growing where he can't see.  But we don't kill germs, do we?  No, we squeeze out shit like war and hate and goddamned idiocy.  What do you think he's going to do when he finally sees us?  We ain't a miracle drug, I tell you that much.

And this is the bit that kills me: people are calling out to him, trying to get his attention.  That's dangerous.  He's not physical; the physical universie is just his little lab, his testing ground, his fucking petri dish.  Flesh ties down thoughts.  But if you think thoughts hard enough, you make an echo.  If enough echos match up, you make resonance. 

You make it loud enough, enough voices together, and he just might notice.

He might turn around...

Testimony

Going experimental today.  :-P  It's longer than usual because phooey.

---

Look here & see Theodore Bartlett, a mid-level pharmaceuticals rep & businessperson.  He is not in himself particularly interesting yet is brought to your attention, here on the sidewalk as he walks to work to the subway station to the city because Theodore Bartlett is about to experience a miracle. 

The nature of the miracle will not be revealed; this would spoil the suspense.

It might be a pillar of fire or a booming voice, but might as easily be something else, something perhaps easily mistaken for happenstance and/or coincidence and/or Al Qaeda.  I myself once had a miraculous pimple.  It was small/red/in all ways unremarkable, and it burst after a week and faded thence from the memory of mankind, yet it was miraculous nonetheless, the hand of God acting directly in all of our lives, and that knowledge has changed me forever because, understanding as I do now and did not then the nature of the miraculous and the implications &c I am able to see Theodore Bartlett and show him unto thee that thou also might see and anticipate what it will be when he finds/encounters/becomes the miraculous and how it might change everything for him and me and all of us.  Please do not forget Theodore Bartlett as the doors hiss closed and separate the smell of rat pee from body odor and whisk him to his job where he will find a miracle and may or may not recognize it for what it is & keep him in your prayers because his miracle might be only a jar of mustard that he thought was empty having one more serving & he will never know, live and never know, die and never know.  Theodore Bartlett I wish you well Godspeed sir be safe and mind the gap.

Pain Management

"After long enough, the pain becomes almost a separate being." Blount gestured, taking in his twisted leg and the layers of scar tissue that ran down his cheek and disappeared under his loose shirt. "Like an animal. I picture it as a cross between a monkey and a parrot, with clever hands and a jagged, hooked beak. Whimsical, no? I make it a pet; I teach it tricks. 'Go to sleep, wait a while.' It is persistent, unruly – like a puppy – but I manage. I reach... an accommodation. One learns to live with agony, eventually. What one cannot live with, what becomes intolerable, is the knowledge that it could have been different." He hitched himself up on his chair, meeting Kantas' eyes. "You meant it for the Dean, I know. You couldn't know that I'd borrow his car after your... tampering. But I hate you for it regardless. And what I hate, I teach it to hate, too." He gestured, and the ingrained strain lines on his face eased fractionally. He straightened like a man relieved of a load. Kantas felt something unseen land heavily on his back. Something with clever hands and a sharp, sharp beak...

Corporate

The Day of the Merger was coming soon, and all of MonSeCo was buzzing with excitement.  The accountants shaved and painted their chests with the symbols of battle and victory.  The secretaries held a ritual dance, though the time of fertility was still distant.  Everyone subtly accented the gifts of MonSeCo in their faces, the protruding brow ridges and thick canines.  The vainer managers, mostly the middle ranks who could see the peaks of their careers receding behind them, used spray-on coloring to make themselves artificial silverbacks.

"Forks and Skewers" at The Way of the Buffalo

An old flash piece of mine, "Forks and Skewers," is currently up at The Way of the Buffalo podcast, hosted by the inimitable Hugh O'Donnell.  This one I wrote all the way back in college, where it met with what I thought was rather embarrassing enthusiasm from the other students, to which my comment was, "Well, it's just a gimmick story."  


And it is, but I still think it's cute.  Go have a listen!